I Love You, Too
by Jillian1
Summary: Post episode for ‘Milagro’. Thoughts of both characters and words that need to be said. Shippy MSR.


TITLE: I Love You, Too

AUTHOR: Jillian

DISCLAIMER: I don't own any of these people. Pretty lame, huh? They all belong to Chris Charter, 1013, FOX, and the actors or actresses who portray them. I'm just using them because I have no life and love fan fiction. All these people have way more money than me, so I beg of you, don't sue!

SUMMARY: Post episode for 'Milagro'. Thoughts of both characters and words that need to be said. Shippy MSR.

RATING: PG-13 for some strong language I think, and sexual themes.

SPOILERS: Milagro, it's a post episode story

FEEDBACK: All of it, even flames, posted here at fanfiction.net or to me at JILLIBEAN@aol.com

AUTHORS NOTES: I love this episode, so I wrote a post-episode for it. This is my opinion on what could have been going through Mulder and Scully's heads. It switches POV from Mulder to Scully. Enjoy!

*MULDER*

"In my book I'd written that Agent Scully falls in love, but that's obviously impossible."

When Padgett said those initial words, a flash of anger lit up my face. Of course Scully could love. I thought Padgett was going for the typical icy, cold, stereotype of Scully. She's neither icy nor cold, she just hides her feelings. She hides them so damn well I don't know what she's feeling. Thankfully she wasn't feeling what Padgett was feeling or she would have done the naked pretzel with our killer in more than just a novel. I was about to lead Scully off, tell her she *could* love (of course I would be too afraid to tell her how much I wished she *would* love me), when Padgett spoke again. 

"Agent Scully is already in love."

The anger left me, subsided immediately. If it wasn't Padgett she loved, but she did love someone, who was it? I felt somewhat conceited at suddenly thinking it was me who Scully loved. Scully could have anyone she wanted, she was a stunning beauty with a brilliant mind. I somehow knew it was me, even if it was arrogant to assume. I loved her, I had told her so. She dismissed it, either believing I was in a drug-induced haze or just not wanting to get all misty-eyed. 

I was suddenly thankful to have her by my side. I tried to read her face, but I couldn't. She looked, sort of like she agreed with Padgett. That could just be spite, though, trying to show Padgett that she didn't love him and that he didn't get inside her head as well as he thought. He got inside her head well enough to know she couldn't love him, couldn't do the things with him that his book depicted. The naked pretzel. "You know me better than that." She had said. For a slight moment I thought of Agent Dana Katherine Scully having some secret, crazy sex life, and it made me smile, even laugh a little. Neither of us had time for secret sex lives.

Now I'm holding her in my arms and she's crying, loud sobs. She's covered in blood, her own, with no wounds on her body. Padgett wasn't burning evidence, he was stopping her certain death. I wondered why Scully didn't want to put him away, and I guess it makes sense to me now. He didn't kill them, he created a real enough character to do it for him. He gave Scully her life instead of taking it, he must have seen what I see in Scully, why I love her like I do. Maybe Padgett wasn't such a bad guy.

Then again he wrote a chapter on him and Scully doing the wild thing in his apartment. I came upon it reading the novel, finding her name, and some actions I couldn't picture Scully doing with a stranger. As a matter of fact, the only person I could picture Scully doing this without getting myself angry and jealous was myself. As I reached this page and read the words, they immediatly caught my attention. Vivid detail of Dana Scully doing the naked pretzel with someone she knew only as a 'stranger.' Not something Scully would do, but it caught my attention. Hell, Scully doing *anything* naked caught my attention, and this was more than just changing clothes. 

He had no right to fantasize about Scully that way. To write those things on paper, things Scully would never do with him. I laugh slightly, the naked pretzel. Not my Scully. In that story she banged Padgett but I knew one day Scully and I would make love. I hated Padgett for thinking of her in that way, thinking he could have her like that. He couldn't, not that she was mine, but she certainly wasn't his and how dare he assume she would be. He thought that he had written her so well that it would be the inevitable truth. 

But he knew he made a mistake. Agent Scully was already in love. She couldn't fall in love with the 'stranger' in the tale, who was Padgett. She loved somebody else, so that smutty chapter was gone. For a moment while I was reading, I replaced the 'stranger' with myself, and now, things were going somewhere. I shook my head and realized I was still angry. I'm angry that he could get into her head and I couldn't, but comforted to know he made mistakes about her judgment, about her character and the things she would do. Then he realized the mistake because he got further into her head so that only made me hate him again, made me envy him. She does too good of a job of hiding her emotions for me to see them.

Walking in and seeing her like that... Thinking she might be dead... It nearly killed me. When she awoke, startled or not, I was so completely thrilled to see her face move, even if it was to cry. She was in my arms and that was enough. She was alive. My worst fears were put to rest while she sobbed in my arms, holding me so tightly I wouldn't be surprised to find marks on my shoulders later.

At least now she's letting go of these emotions. The tears are falling, not quiet tears, loud sobs. I don't know if it's just the shock, the near death experience, or if it's something more. That she's realizing he was right, she's lonely, that she wants to be with me. I hope that's it. I hope she loves me the way I love her. I want to tell her I love her again, I want to hear her tell me she loves me too. I don't, it doesn't need to be said. I just hold her in my arms, running my fingers through her hair. I don't need to say it. It's understood.

*SCULLY*

That man read me like a book. He wrote me almost to a perfect standard, getting most of my emotions right. I was alone, lonely, wishing for someone to love. It wasn't Padgett who I wanted. It was Mulder, and Padgett eventually figured that out. I hated it. I tried so hard to cover up my feelings, to hide my emotions, and I thought I did a good job. Then Padgett comes along and tells me my life story and how I felt the whole damn time. That's part of the reason I'm crying. I wasn't as well hidden as I thought.

Padgett was right, I already was in love. In love with Mulder, afraid to say it or even think it most of the time. When Mulder told me what Padgett wrote about me, what Mulder so beautifully entitled as the "naked pretzel", I was first embarrassed. Mulder read an account of me doing the naked pretzel. It was weird reading it myself, he even got a few of my sexual tendencies right, and I wondered what Mulder thought as he read it. Then I was worried, he thought I actually did it. I told him he knew me better than that. I hoped he did. I would never do that, sleep with a stranger, because I was in love with Mulder.

Well, never again, anyway. That whole Ed Jerse issue has to much background to count. That was just Dana Katherine Scully breaking out of the Catholic school girl mold for a dangerous encounter. You know how to pick em, Dana, I tell myself, remembering the man turned out to be a murderer.

Back to Padgett, though. I read his account of what happened in his mind and was even more humiliated. Mulder read this! Me making love to a man I knew as the 'stranger', feeling "wild, feral, guilty." I hadn't felt wild feral or guilty since... Probably Ed Jerse and the entire tattoo escapade. That was the last guy I slept with anyway. Did Mulder think I was some kind of person who slept with a stranger at the drop of a dime? I mean, he questioned that it didn't happen, could he think I would have... That I was desperate so I did his next door neighbor to relieve the sexual tension? All the sexual tension MULDER caused me? He was the only one I'd wanted to sleep with in years. Sure, there were occasional good looking men who caught my eye when I was pissed at Mulder or just feeling lonely. I'd only acted on one, but there were people who I wished I had to guts to act on. Like the deputy, who ended up being a vampire, so I'm pretty glad I let him nowhere near my neck. Mulder was the only one I really wanted, although I was strangely attracted to Padgett for a while.

But who the hell did Padgett think he was? Writing me out to be panting at his touch in a black lacy bra. He had no right to say I would enjoy his hands all over me. I wouldn't, I may have found him slightly enticing but it was only because he was mysterious. I was also pissed off at Mulder at the time. Padgett was wrong. I wouldn't have slept with him. 

Padgett had one thing right, though. *If* I slept with some guy I picked up now, all I would think was "What would Mulder think of me?" That was what I was thinking the entire time I was with Ed Jerse, while that delicious dangerous streak ran through me. That was what made it good. That I was defying Mulder somehow, what would he think of me? It was dangerous and exciting. Then again, Ed Jerse was different, I didn't know what I felt for Mulder back then. Ed was a handsome dangerous man, and Mulder at the moment was on my shit list. Now things were *so* different, I knew I was in love with Mulder. I wouldn't sleep with Padgett, and he knew it. I only loved Mulder. I don't know if he even knows... I know he loves me. He doesn't have to say it again, it's been said. 

I hold Mulder tightly, almost clawing at his back. The blood all over me reminds me of what happened moments ago... it was terrible. Mulder was downstairs chasing after Padgett and some guy was trying to pull my heart out of my damn chest. This doesn't normally happen to people, only when you work on the X-Files. Anyway, I'm screaming and kicking and fighting him off and suddenly I black out. I guess it seemed like the end for me, it was over and I never told Mulder I love him. Suddenly a face was above me and scared the crap out of me. I calmed immediately, it was Mulder. Thank God.

I just cried, holding him, gripping him with all my might. I didn't want to hide what I felt anymore. If Padgett could read my emotions, why bother hiding them? Why not let Mulder know I love him? I'm in love with him. I was, and still am, holding on for dear life, never wanting to let go. He didn't let me go and I was thankful for it. I could love, I did love, and it was Mulder. I think, no, I *know*, that Padgett knew this. He burnt his novel, Lord knows what happened to him, it was the only way to save me. He gave me what he couldn't get back, love. For Mulder. The chance to tell him. 

"Agent Scully is already in love."

Indeed she is, I tell myself. With the man holding her tightly as she shakes in his arms. I love him. He loves me and he doesn't have to say it, it's understood. I know he's thinking it, he should know I'm thinking it. I don't know if he does, he told me he loved me once but I never told him. I looked up at him, in the face, he hadn't said anything the whole time.

"I love you, too." I sighed softly. Holding on for dear life, never wanting to let go.


End file.
